It is generally known that during cell cultivation in biological and biotechnological experiments the composition of the extracellular biomatrix is of very great importance for the attachment and specific differentiation performance of the respective cells. Such an extracellular matrix consists, among other things, of different collagens, laminin, fibropectin and other collagen-like or non-collagen-like proteins. In many experiments it was found that highly specialized cells cannot be cultivated without such a substrate material.
So far, besides the microcarrier technique, there are only a few auxiliary means permitting the cultivation of live cells on supports. These include hollow cylinders with a filter material placed on one side thereof, and on which cells can grow. Furthermore it is known that a confluent cell layer can be cultivated on a porous or semipermeable substrate, in which case the substrate in disk-shaped form must be clamped in an annular holding device, which, stabilized in this manner, is placed in the appropriate culture vessel (U.S Pat. No. 4,608,342).